Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Here are some Quotations and thought from an interview with this amazingly articulate choreographer."when you listen to music, you are hearing thought made audible, and when you see dance, you are witnessing thought made visible" -- Alonzo King ... chill.not just whim, and emotion, but thought structures.

"intuition that needs not validation--internal knowing, goal of the artist"

"really tapping into the uniqueness of my voice"

‎"aim of art is higher than art" Emerson "role of art is for the good of man" Aristotle

"artist have been separated from society, as these afreet, isolated, egotist...taken away from the rigorous masculinity, vigor, of ordinary life...."

‎"the end of your life, you become a masterpiece of humanity"

‎"think of art as a knowledge, we see its real purpose"

‎"we are consciousness"

‎"technique as 2nd nature...to be lost and not self-conscious...I want my dancers to represent the world"

‎"painfully look at television"

"spirituality as practicality" ... "if you don't recognize anything larger than you in your life, what is the point of living?"

"find gratitude..." Mitote: give thanks

‎"people are poorly trained today"

"the body is an interference--what really is happening is spirit--the spirit is dancing...not trained in ideas, just imitation of forms"

maybe that's why i danced, i became a choreographer....i was not trained in a form, i was trained in ideas and spirit. mitote

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201112261030

From the Archives: Alonzo King

Celebrated choreographer Alonzo King discusses the new season of LINES ballet. The San Francisco contemporary dance troupe is performing a world premiere set to music in the Sephardic tradition. We reprise a portion of the interview as part of our special holiday programming.

A group of protesters at the Occupy Oakland action to shut down the Port of Oakland on December 12, 2011. (Photo: Queena Kim)

The Occupy movement is known internationally for protesting the inequalities of the global financial system, so much so that in four short months, "Occupy" has essentially become a brand known the world over.

The name change is proving contentious at Occupy Oakland, with some protesters accusing Native Americans of guilt tripping in the name of supporting the oppressed. But cut through the chatter, and the basic point seems to be this: Occupy doesn't want to give up the brand.

“That name change could ... alienate Oakland from the wider movement,” wrote John C Osborne, who has been reporting on the Occupy movement on his blog the Classist. “The brand recognition if you will.”

The irony of Occupy Oakland being captivated by "branding" isn’t lost on Morning Star Gali, a Native American activist from Oakland who’s helping lead the name change effort. The Occupy movement, in general, shuns the corporatization of society.

More to the point, Gali says that for many Native Americans, especially those who came up in the “Red Power” movement in the 1960s, the term “Occupy” has a lot of baggage.

Native Americans tribes were brutally “occupied" by Spanish and English colonizers. Later, the United States government waged war on the Native American tribes and forced them into camps or reservations. More than 90 percent of North America’s indigenous population was wiped out by “occupiers,” either through war or the spread of disease.

And Bay Area Native American activists believe the occupation continues. In California, many Bay Area tribes are still struggling to gain federal recognition as sovereign nations. In the absence of a treaty, or compensation for their land, Native American activists in the Bay Area say they continue to live under outside rule.

As a Native American, “it’s nauseating to hear the word ‘occupy’ over and over again.'" Gali said. "We need to occupy this, we need to occupy that. It’s the modern day colonial language.”

The controversy highlights a wider criticism buzzing in the blogosphere about the Occupy movement’s use of political language. Some people of color feel that the movement at large is guilty of “linguistic” culture shopping. In other words, that the predominantly white Occupy uses politically charged words to adorn their movement like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

“There’s an appropriation of the words of our struggles,” Ball said. “They’re claiming the language for their own political transcendence without any sensitivity to the history of this country."

The casual use of “slave” terminology among Occupy protesters alienates African-Americans like Earl Black, a retired high school teacher, who drives from his home in Tracy to attend the Occupy Oakland protests.

On one of those drives, Black remembers hearing a radio interview of an Occupy protester who wanted to change the name of Zuccotti Park back to Liberty Park, the name protesters bestowed on their base. (Here's a link to the full debate.)

“He said they need to change the name of the park because 'Zuccotti' is its 'slave name,'” Black said recently at Frank Ogawa Plaza, the home of Occupy Oakland. “That hit me between the eyes. To use 'slavery’ in that fast-and-loose fashion just to get the attention of an audience. I had to turn the radio off.”

Black knows the intent isn’t “malicious.” But as an African-American man in his 70s, he believes that equating financial inequality with our country’s legacy of chattel slavery is ignorant and threatens to push away African-Americans, who have been disproportionately hurt by the current economic downturn.

A younger generation of Occupy protesters have argued that marginalized groups often reclaim once-offensive terms. The gay community took back the derisive term “queer,” and a generation of younger African-Americans has flipped the racial slur “nigger” into a term of endearment, said Davey D, a political blogger who often writes about hip-hop.

“Can that happen with Occupy? Can it be flipped?” Davey D wrote.

Some Native American activists say that question assumes that "occupation" is a remnant of the past that can be dusted off and reintroduced. Instead, they believe Oakland, which is the ancestral home of the Chochenyo Ohlone, is still under occupation because the tribe has been denied federal recognition.

Recently, Native American activists put forward a proposal to change the name to "Decolonize Oakland" in a general assembly meeting that lasted three hours. The proposal received 68 percent of the vote, but failed to get the 90 percent approval needed to pass. Native Americans have been holding teach-ins on the subject and say they'll put the proposal up for a vote again.

"If there was a big sign over Gaza that said, 'Occupy Palestine' how would the Palestinian people feel?" asked Gali. "But somehow it's OK if that happens here" on occupied Chochenyo Ohlone land.

Queena Kim is Community Editor at The Bay Citizen. She came to the Bay Citizen from 89.3-KPCC, Southern California’s leading NPR-affiliate, where she helped start-up its highly-successful arts and culture show Off-Ramp. Queena also co-produces a pop + tech program called CyberFrequencies, which continues to air on KPCC and Sirius/XM. A graduate of NYU and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Queena spent four years at the Wall Street Journal and has written for various publications including the Los Angeles Times, Modesto Bee and the LA Weekly.

Monday, December 26, 2011

I often like to take walks by myself, and watch the people pass by, time and space, here, seem aligned and together.I see so many faces, so many facts, so many of those I wish to get to know, date, fuck, be-friend, choreograph, touch, massage, speak to, feed, drink, smell, dance with....Or maybe, I am already doing all of that simply by being with them, by being present.

Perhaps we do not have to do so much, to do everything. Because of my walking, my paths, my standing, people have to move in relations to me. Due to physics and other chemical realities, we cannot move through each other, but, rather, with each other. The atoms we carry call for gravity between us, a relationship so deep, so essential, we often forget its existence--yet it helps us to create an order to our world, our perceptions, our minds, our bodies.

As I move through people, I enter their lives, even for a second, they see this Native Man, this Joto, this whatever...and then I leave.........so impermanent it seems, a dance i have created, choreographed, with my dancing-walking body.

Perhaps this is the license I get as an artist, as a choreographer, to call what I see fit as dance. Not necessarily everything, but that which I see fit. Though, there is not much I would exclude as dance, I must say, why it is dance is much more important, much more meaningful than "being called dance". Perhaps it is in the why, the conceptualization, the practice, the continuance that keeps Art alive. It is against the practical, against the name, it is the wonder, the wander.

It is there, that I find my place in my work. As it is made, I do not try to name it, I do not try to capture it, I try to wonder, to wonder, to walk through my own creation and let my presence, my gravity shape what is already there....

Maybe this is the sacredness The Creator has given us...the gravity of relationship between all of us, living things, all of us humans.....

My dance, the art, the piece, the pieces, they all, are, A spiritual journey through space......

"...see, there is a domestic snap, a classic snap, you have your "Z" snap, and of course your Queen Diva Snap!....medusa snap.... 'Cunt' with all its meaning and sting, in the Ball, is a 'power word' of vindication. It can mean 'cunty: possessing a soft and irresistible muse-like presence that only a woman can have', or it can mean 'cunt: hard, fast, of woman and desire, ready to eat & destroy anyone who messes with her"

A Dance Company based in Xicano/Mexica Tradition, Voguing, and Contemporary Dance Practice. This WEBSITE and BLOG serves as way for Cuauhtemoc, his mitote dance company, and collaborators, to share their vision, IDEAS, work, dancing, future, PERFORMANCES, and history.

photo by Rachel Holt

MISSION

The mission of Cuauhtemoc Mitote Dance Company is to foster, create, and perform new and dynamic dance-based work which utilizes experimentalism, and embodied histories to produce Mitote* about timeless and current cultural issues.

We are based in a traditional and contemporary dance practice, stemming from Danza Azteca, Two-Spirit and LBGTQ, Voguing, Latina/o, and Classic American dance cannons.

Artist-Scholar-Warrior

Cuauhtemoc is a quare, indigenous, xicano dancer, choreographer, traditional and contemporary artist, and writer. He is from Santa Cruz California--but he considers himself from the Bay Area generally. His work, Choreography, explores pure-unadorned steps, shapes, forms, and rhythms gathered from ancestral memory, and tends to hold themes and issues of race, gender, sexuality, sub- & Counter- Culture.
He holds an MFA in Dance from Mills College, and a BA in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University.
His current project is developing Mitote-- a Dance form which merges contemporary and traditional dance practices, blurring the lines between ritual and performance, but in a modern sensibility.
Mitote is an mix of Inter-tribal Dance, Jazz, Ballet, Modern&Post-Modern Dance, Contemporary Dance, Aztec Dance, and Voguing